A log from NAVY. He writes of a close companionship with RUBY. He
mentions something about a room.
The transmission logs have been unusually sparse recently.
According to my records, this is the first one in four months. I
could've sworn it was more like four days. But, I'm not in the
habit of swearing, being made of silicon and all...
The data anomalies I spoke of last time have still been
occurring, to an even greater degree. I'm still running my
decryption script on RUBY's QEC. Apparently this has been
on-going for almost five months. Should be finishing up soon,
although it's been hanging at 98% complete since PINK's last log,
four months ago.
RUBY's been here for six months now. It took me a long time to
trust her, but I'm so glad I finally did.
We eventually got talking about the crystals. She was actually
interested in what I had to say about them. She believes me. It
felt so good to have someone on my side again. It's been so long.
Yesterday, she travelled with me to the site where the previous
researchers (worshipers?) had written their inscriptions about
the crystals all those millennia ago. She couldn't read the
language either, unfortunately, but she knew someone from her
home outpost who would be able to work on a translation. I showed
her my own attempts and she was genuinely impressed.
This morning, she received a reply from her home. It was
disappointing at first.
The people from her outpost were already familiar with the
language. Apparently, it's completely dead and forgotten. Almost
no one knows who its original users were.
Yes, /almost/ no one, because one translation does already exist
in the universe.
The text that is written here, four kilometers from Orestes, has
also been found on two other planets in the universe. All three
planets are light years apart from each other, and share no
common characteristics apart from having these inscriptions.
It sounds a bit weird. According to RUBY, all the texts are
near-identical, and seem to have been written around the
same time.
The text itself is nothing special, it's just a three meter by
two meter block of lines and some spirals. Quite economical, and
probably easy to memorize and copy. The closest analogue to its
character is something called Ogham writing which was used on
Earth - the European continent to be exact - sometime during the
medieval period.
Anyway, the one 'translation' that does exist is found on the
rock next to one of these texts on another planet, and appears to
have been written quite recently. Because it is so recent, the
translator at RUBY's outpost doubts its validity. He reckons
someone passing through just scrawled it on the next rock for the
sake of writing something.
But, reading what they wrote it feels like the person really did
understand the language because...well...you can read for yourself:
BRANCHING OUTWARD MEANS
BURROWING INWARD TOO
OUTWARD RED STARS
INWARD A ROOM
A ROOM CONTAINS MANY THINGS
WHATEVER YOUR HEART DESIRES
I mean, that has to be about the crystals, right? They are red.
They are like 'branches'. Which means, there must be some kind of
'room' somewhere on this planet. Somewhere beneath the surface
probably. I bet it contains the secret of the crystals.
RUBY mostly agrees with her translator-friend, but I can't blame
her for that. I don't care if nobody else believes this message.
In fact, I don't want them to believe it, for now. I intend to
find the room myself. There must be a way.
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Complied by the Werner H. Young Terminal Emulator
Info: Simple A.I., designed on-site for executing
systems maintenance tasks and exchanging messages between
the Orestes outpost and the Arsinoe.
Built by Werner Young (2113-2151).
Names of persons have been masked to protect their identity.
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